Am I Famous Now…

I have had the LG Shine for a month now and my feeling towards the phone are split. Esthetically the phone is great. It is an eye catcher, put it on a table at the bar or at $tarbuck$ and you notice the interest of most people.
Especially if you like nice things, good looking gizmos. And I like nice desing: I use a Sony Vaio, a Logitech diNovo keyboard and mouse set and most of time always have a Canon Ixus digital camera with me.

One month long I have done my best, trying to make sure the LG Shine was always in the same pocket as my keys. I wanted to test the scratch resistancy of the mirror plated screen. After one month I can’t discover any scratches on the mirror. This has positively surprised me.
The rest of the body case has suffered minor scratches, but I guess that is normal with a stainless/metal¹ case.

The design of the LG Shine is splendid

The LCD screen is a pleasure to look at, a real beauty, great colors, marvelous fonts with smooth aliasing and the whole menu is colorful without being an eye sore. Much the opposite of the design here at AIFN.
Although the menu icons miss some in depth detail and drop shadows, they are nice and smooth. The animated icon background one finds through the whole menu is not disturbing and a really nice detail IMHO (even if especially here I miss some shadows for the icons).

The design of the LG Shine is splendid!

When it comes to daily usage I must be more critical, negative even. I could easily say ‘It’s a LG Phone’ and anyone who has some experience with LG phones knows what this means. But it gets worse : it’s a LG phone with 5 buttons.

If I weren’t nuts yet, the LG Shine buttons would have driven me nuts

The button assignment is a catastrophe. After 4 weeks I still can’t use the 5 buttons blindly and correctly at the same time. 5 buttons are a dream. I remember how much I used the buttons on my Clie TH55. Best thing about the Clie was that the buttons totally configurable were. The LG Shine’s aren’t². If I weren’t nuts yet, the LG Shine buttons would have driven me nuts.

The slider behavior is weird to say the least. When closing the slider, within seconds the buttons go into lock mode³. But that is only if you have the menu closed. When the menu is open, LG sticks to its old paradigm to keep the last settings in memory. And forgets to lock the buttons. Not that much of a problem, unless you’re in WAP mode (the pre-release version is only a 2G phone) and have no data flat rate. You can’t call without opening the slider anyway, which I actually would have loved to be able to.

In the 4 weeks with the LG Shine I have realized it actually is possible to live without mobile internet. As where I had hoped to toy with mobile apps, I admit I couldn’t be bothered to look for wap.apps and install them.
The camera takes great pictures, especially for a 2MP phone camera. They surely are good enough for today’s foto browsing flickr.
The flat keypad is good looking with the blue backlight, but surely not ideal for text junkies. Luckily I am not one of those, but I would mail lots if the LG Shine were a 3G phone.

I haven’t really used the mp3 player, but a first test with Run by AIR was satisfying for a phone.

But there are two major problems I haven’t mentioned so far.
First the volume is WAY to quiet, even the maximum volume. I have missed several calls because the phone doesn’t ring loud enough. Also the LG Shine hardly ever managed it to wake me up because of this.
And second the scroll wheel needs to be optimized. The wheel lags and the distance one needs to scroll between 2 menu items is too long IMHO.

All in all I think the LG Shine is a great phone for the targeted group : people who like good looking gizmos.
If you want that special phone with the awesome design, the LG Shine is for you!
If you’re looking for an phone with awesome usability, you’ll have to wait some more.

I want both. And now put my hopes on the LG Prada. And my kingdom⁴ for a great phone which is not called iPhone.

¹ I am still not convinced the casing is 100% metal.
² The possibility to configure the buttons would make the phone a marvelous phone. Firmware? Anyone? LG can freely call me to reassign the buttons as well. :D.
³ I wished this was also configurable.
⁴ I have none, but feel free to take the United Kingdom. :D